


The Unfamiliar

by JazzBaby466



Category: Dublin Murder Squad Series - Tana French
Genre: Drunk confessions, dark secrets, platonic Rob/Cassie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-12
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2019-03-03 21:50:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13350219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzBaby466/pseuds/JazzBaby466
Summary: Cassie and Rob are so close, she feels like she knows him inside out. But there is something hidden deep down, something he rarely even glances at himself. One drunk night, deep into the suffocating vortex of Operation Vestal, it surfaces.





	The Unfamiliar

**Author's Note:**

> An in-depth discussion about In the Woods that I came across online a while ago inspired me to write this. I know we all have our own interpretation of what happened to Jamie and Peter, and I sure as hell don't have any definite answers. So this is just supposed to be a little food for thought. Thank you for deciding to read this! And as always, kudos and comments of any sort are greatly appreciated!

Something, a random memory from the dark, messy tangle that was Operation Vestal, has been coming back to me recently. It didn’t seem important at the time, but that was back when Rob and I were close as two pups from the same litter and when we thought that our time together was endless, meaning plenty of chances to repeat or extend on any drunk or off-hand conversation we had.

I’m not sure why I’m only now remembering, and I’m tempted to blame the booze, but to be fair, we had plenty of that during that particular time – or any time we spent together, if I’m being honest – so that can’t have been all there was to it. Instead, I’ve started wondering whether maybe some part of me knew intuitively that we were touching on something big and dangerous and withdrew instantly, like when you accidentally touch a finger to a bad wound, wince and recoil in pain, then quickly do something else to distract yourself instead of tending to the injury.

I’ve been trying to remember when exactly the conversation might have taken place, but as I said, in my head Vestal is just one big mess and the timeline is as tangled as the rest of it. I feel like it must have been later in the investigation, when Rob was already starting to disintegrate and letting his guard down around me more than ever, and I wonder where Sam was that night, but I can’t for the life of me remember. Possibly, he went home early and left Rob and me, progressing from tipsy to seriously hammered as the night went on, to our own devices. I wouldn’t blame him. The days had been so tense and a certain desire for some stress relief was warranted, I feel. Only ours took the shape of ridiculous teenage conversations about who knew more about poetry and who was the faster sprinter and who had kissed more people, plus some giddy laughing and dancing around my flat. (Heather would have strangled us had we ever dared play music at two in the morning at her place.)

“If you think”, I remember Rob saying with some sort of exaggerated hand gesture, “that you could _ever_ outrun me, Maddox, you are, plainly put, _delusional_.”

“I can see why you wouldn’t want to admit it”, I smirked, “being so much taller and all. But height isn’t all, you know? Height doesn’t cancel out the negative effect of having the fitness level of a sloth that’s been kept in a zoo for years, completely overfed by tourists and…”

Somehow, the image of an obese sloth having food thrown at it while lying around apathetically struck me as the most hilarious thing, and while I was bent over giggling uncontrollably, Rob decided to join in instead of being insulted. I was trying to hold my wine glass without spilling anything and struggling considerably until Rob, who was marginally more in control of himself still, showed some mercy, took it from my hands and placed it on the coffee table in front of us.

“Either way”, I gasped, when the laughing fit subsided and my breathing finally began to normalize, “even if you _were_ faster than me, which you’re not, let’s not forget which one of us is a hundred times more flexible than the other. Remember, I can do splits and backflips and all that crazy cat woman shite.”

“Shame they don’t make you wear her costume”, Rob told me, completely dead-pan. “You could stun criminals into surrender.”

What followed were about two seconds of silence, then uncontrolled, gaspy laughing that made my sides hurt: round two. It went on like that for a while, just our usual silly back and forth, until we could feel that pleasant type of late-night, alcohol-induced sleepiness cover us like a soft fleece blanket. I yawned widely, and Rob couldn’t help but catch it and mimic my motion.

“We should probably get some kip before tomorrow, eh?”, I said, words slurred as much from the alcohol as they were from sheer exhaustion.

“God”, Rob said, suddenly incredibly serious and with a gloomy stare into the distance. “I hope we catch the bastard.”

I can’t know for sure whether he was thinking of the trowel, too, but I certainly was and it made me feel instantly sober again, soft wine-glow all gone, leaving only harsh reality and a hint of nausea.

“Let’s”, I said. “We’ll make sure he doesn’t get away.” After a tiny pause, I added, and in that moment, I didn’t have to _fake_ confidence, I was feeling it, I was certain, beyond any doubt, that whoever had taken Katy’s life would end up with one of us letting the cuffs click shut around his wrists, “He’ll pay.”

Rob only nodded darkly, while I leaned forward to pick my wine glass back up for one last sip. Only my hand-eye-coordination had gone all wonky, sober feeling or not, and I knocked it right over and spilled the rest of my wine all over the coffee table, red but watery, like diluted animal blood. “Bollocks!”

Rob only turned his head lazily, still lost in thoughts, and I forced myself to get up, walk to the kitchen in as straight a line as possible, and get some paper towels to soak up the mess. Every movement was clumsy, a little over the top, and I almost stumbled over my own feet on my way back to the kitchen to throw the wet clump in my hands away. When I came back, Rob was still staring into the distance in a way that was beginning to scare me a little.

I knew better than to ask, though, only reclaimed my spot from earlier without making too much of a fuss. Secretly, I suppose, I was hoping for some kind of case-related epiphany from him. What I got instead, though, was so much more complicated, far more personal than I had expected, and, I believe, a lot more valuable.

“Cassie?”, he asked after a while of silence, and his voice seemed to have dropped half an octave.

“Yeah?”, I asked, trying for the appropriate, innocuous tone somewhere between serious and unbothered.

“Can I tell you something?”

Though Rob has always been one for drama, he didn’t normally show it so openly. And something about his hunched, defensive posture and that vacant look in his eyes made me think this was something else and instantly caused me to sit up straighter. “Of course.”

“During that first time, you know…”, he began, in a rough voice, and had to clear his throat after just those few words. “After, well. After that summer.”

He was talking about his friends Jamie and Peter, and his final summer in Knocknaree. He was talking about his last days as a child. He didn’t have to say the words.

“Yes”, I said, dropping down to a whisper, as if in fear of disturbing his train of thought.

“I saw it in Jessica the other day, that…” Here, he had to clear his throat again. “That empty look, you know? Like you’re on drugs. Those first few days are… just so surreal. Close friends, a sister… suddenly gone, like they never existed. I’d never lost anybody before, you know? I bet neither has she. In a way, at that age, it’s too much to wrap your mind around. You keep… you keep _forgetting_ , for fuck’s sake! Hell, these normal thoughts just keep popping into your head, of ‘Oh, yeah, I’ll tell them this’ and ‘Hey, we should do that sometime’, until suddenly, you remember and…”

He broke off, shaking his head, as if the words were too much. Or maybe he knew that I’d understood and he didn’t need to say more.

“Yeah”, I whispered, a little hoarsely. “I remember that from when my parents died. I think it’s normal, in a way. Your mind needs some time to adjust.”

“Yes”, he said, headshake turning into a nod, and his voice a little steadier. “And that’s not what I wanted to say anyway. What I wanted to say was that… you’re vulnerable, right?” At that, he suddenly turned his head to look at me.

I remember frowning slightly, because the question surprised me. “Yes. Of course, Rob.”

He took a shaky breath, turned away from me again, then ran a tired hand over his face. “You’re vulnerable”, he repeated. “You’re so young and you’ve just lost somebody. You’re so spacey, like Jessica. And people should be taking care of you, right? People _are_ taking care of her. And that’s good.”

I had no idea where he was going with any of what he was saying, but this felt like a crucial moment, so I kept my mouth shut for a while.

“Only…” He wasn’t looking at me anymore, he was staring at a random spot on the carpet, blind to the present, seeing only the memory. “Only my parents… didn’t do that. I mean, they _did_! They _did_ take care of me, of course! But they weren’t… gentle. They weren’t supportive. They were… so distanced, I felt. It was like they…” He broke off, started again. “It felt like they were afraid of me.”

“Afraid?” At that, I found myself frowning again. “Really?”

There was another second, maybe, where the thought hung in the air heavy as thick smoke. Then, Rob shook his head as if to clear it and looked at me again.

“I don’t know”, he said, in a tone that wiped the idea away. “Probably not. I mean, they were probably traumatized, too. And grieving. I suppose they just didn’t know how to show it. Plus, my perception wasn’t the best at the time. In fact, I’d say it was fairly skewed. And like I’ve told you many times, I barely even remember anything that came before boarding school.”

His tone had a finality to it that told me that the conversation was over, and I couldn’t help but feel glad. I yawned again and said “We won’t remember anything about our case tomorrow, either, if we don’t sleep soon. You’re staying, aren’t you?”

He laughed, just a small snort. “If I go home now, I’ll probably knock something over by accident, and then Heather will wake up and kill me with the next blunt object in sight.”

“Yup”, I giggled, “Agreed. Going home is simply too dangerous. You can have the couch.”

We fell asleep soon afterwards, and by morning, it was time to function and give ourselves over to the case again, which is why, as I said, I barely spent any time thinking about what he’d said that night. It took months, but eventually, it came back to me. I tried to push it away, tried to ignore the strange feeling of uneasiness, like a bad taste in your mouth, but I could never shake it off again entirely.

And when, after many reconsiderations and aborted attempts, I finally found myself asking Sam, who didn’t love the idea but complied after a bit of persuasion, to bring me the Jamie and Peter case file, when I was bent over those sheets of paper detailing the little evidence there was in their case, _that_ was when the uneasiness turned into something bigger, something like fear. When I read about little Adam, disturbingly silent and unresponsive, all by himself with blood in his shoes, and then thought of Rob, telling me in that strange, confidential tone that his own parents had been afraid of him, it was like that moment right after you turn off the light, the familiar landscape of your room instantly turned foreign, your mind wondering wildly how you’re supposed to know that nobody is suddenly standing right in front of you and nothing has crept up behind you in the dark. That was when it hit me that I shouldn’t have let any of it go so easily.


End file.
